Mastery

This year I decided to write on a regular schedule. Committing
to it was a strategic decision. The decision part felt good. However, I quickly
learned that choosing is easy; doing is hard.

It was 6 am and I was staring at my computer screen, waiting for
inspiration. I was there to write a blog, and it just didn’t come. Questions came
to mind:

Should I come back to
this?

Did I submit my expense
report?

Am I really a writer?

Is the dryer turned on?

I was paralyzed by the blinking cursor. How was I going to create
content if I couldn’t write? (Strategies for “curating” other people’s content swirled
up in my mind as an option.)

Morten Hansen, author of Great
at Work, sums up his research on personal productivity by observing that:

“Picking a few priorities is only half the equation. The other
half is the harsh requirement that you must obsess over your chosen area of
focus to excel.”

What Steve Jobs did for Apple embodies this quote. After being
ousted as Apple CEO, Jobs returned in 1997. He made the decision to reduce the
number of Apple products by 70%. His focus on the success of the remaining 30%
is legendary.

Not only did it save the company from insolvency, it created an
obsession for execution that is the hallmark of Apple’s success today.

Hansen encourages us to, “Do
less, then obsess.” Only extreme dedication creates the extraordinary focus
needed for extraordinary results. Tiger Woods’ recent win of the Masters is
another example of what years of extraordinary obsession can do.

So, I stayed at my computer. For 20 minutes I did a stare-down
with the screen. I finally decided to write something stupid. And I did, and it
was. And I wrote another line, and it was less stupid. By 10 am I had three
blogs ready to go. But more importantly, I had done what I committed to do.

Make the hard decisions, then stay with them long enough to
obsess over making them better.

It is painfully easy to compare our worst to their best. Even easier to feel the futility of achieving similar feats.

When did LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jordan first demonstrate the courage to become NBA superstars? My bet: Long before their points added up on the scoreboard.

What enables them to push through the pain of constant failure that inevitably comes with their level of achievement? My bet: Courage.

As young children, we had unlimited determination. We tried everything courageously—walking, talking, creating, exploring. And the world around us typically applauded our efforts. Then the school-years hit, and suddenly it wasn’t okay to try and fail. We were measured and applauded for our successes, not for our efforts.

Those years of conditioning in school follow us into the workplace. We often stick to the safe places—areas that we’re good at and know we can succeed. That behaviour shields us from fear and vulnerability, but it also shields us from achieving our full potential.

To achieve what’s possible requires a return to childhood courage. We need to once again unabashedly create, explore, and risk to learn new things.

Most of us know the fear of pushing past our comfort zone to a higher potential only to feel like an impostor or fraud.

On a recent conference call, I was asked for my opinion by the Chief Executive. The call went silent. It was like I went into a slow-motion moment. The self-doubt was instantaneous:

Am I sure?

What if I’m wrong?

Shouldn’t I know more?

I forced myself out of freeze mode, stated my opinion, and waited. I remember physically flinching in fear (for what seemed like minutes) for her response. My insecurities started multiplying as I prepared to be criticized business-school style.

She finally broke the silence, “Very helpful insight, thank you.”

As these moments of doubt repeat themselves, I strive to embrace the challenge and push through with determination. My mantra has become, “embrace it till you make it.”

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly…at first.” Sound wisdom based on biology. Whether the new skill is riding a bike, speaking a language, or hitting a three-pointer, we need to get comfortable with the discomfort of imperfection.

Dan Coyle (Talent Code) observed:

Struggle isn’t an option, it’s a biological requirement.

As it was when we were small children, so it is now—without pushing beyond our comfort zones, we don’t grow. Comfort dominates at the sensitive margin where our skill and capability meet. Growth happens when we push beyond it. It takes a fierce resolution to be okay with making mistakes. Lots of mistakes.

Get up, take a few steps, fall, get up again… repeated again and again with the whole world watching. What could be more courageous than that?

Michael Jordan admits:

I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life.And that is why I succeed.

Worry less about being imperfect or an imposter; worry more about becoming courageous in imperfection. Try taking a scary new action this week that requires you to “embrace it till you make it.”

In the movie “Limitless”, Bradley Cooper plays an unmotivated deadbeat writer who becomes a Wall Street superstar…in a matter of days. His secret? A daily pill that unlocks the entire capability of his brain.

Within thirty seconds he begins to see new connections and remembers everything he’s ever heard or seen. (My favorite line, “Math actually became useful.”)

His downside? The pill is killing him. Not a perfect scenario, but an intriguing idea: What if you had that power?

Here’s the good news: You are limitless. The bad news: A pill won’t do it.

The idea of a quick fix is sexy, but only the compounding consistency of craftsmanship will get you results. And that will happen over time.

Anders Ericsson’s empirical research in Peak makes it clear:

What sets experts apart from the rest of us is that their years of practice have changed the neural circuitry… which in turn make possible the incredible memory, pattern recognition, problem solving, and other sorts of advanced abilities.

These world-class capabilities are available to all of us. We just need to realize the potential we already have. One day at a time, over time.

Bill Gates makes an interesting observation:

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Don’t short what you can accomplish. You don’t need a pill to be a prodigy, just a commitment to improvement. Craftsmanship can enable you to create a new window of limitless potential.

kraft is an artistic use of the Danish word for force or strength. It is the power in each of us that drives us to do more, be more and contribute more. It’s my take on the root of craftsmanship that describes a deep passion for the art of your skill.

worx is a lab, a studio or workspace where your vocation comes alive. It's the crossroads of preparation and innovation. It's an exciting place to be.

In Stephen Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, he asks us to consider:

What do you love enough to turn Pro? What are you so passionate about that you would put all of your time and focus on?... What ails us is living our lives as amateurs.

Amateurs experience the continuous pain of process without improvement. They tread the hamster wheel of “same thing, different day.”

The amateur plays part-time, the professional full-time. The amateur is a weekend warrior. The professional is there seven days a week.

kraftworx is where those who want to become Pros come to play. They’re all in, fully committed and show proper reverence for the quality of their contribution.

While mastery is innate in each of us, we often forget over time. The art is remembering what you can become. And kraftworx is a place to inspire you with the strength and force to rediscover it in yourself.

Just having a goal is the best way to ensure that you will lose. Even if you are obsessed with achieving it, a goal can be a grand distraction.

You will kid yourself that you have something meaningful to work towards. Ambition to accomplish the extraordinary won’t get you any more traction than a “vision board” papered with inspiring images (…it’s a dirty little “secret” that we love to believe, but isn’t true.)

It's the stuff of losers.

Ben Bergeron, coach to CrossFit world champions, calls it like this:

We’ve been told that high achievers are those who are out there enthusiastically setting goals….In reality, it’s the opposite. People tend to focus disproportionately on results, while neglecting the day-to-day things that will get them there.

Setting goals can be helpful. Clarity of direction is a good first step. The trouble is we often stop there. Most don’t implement the “next steps.”

For example, consider an annual sales quota: Here’s where my sales are today, and here’s where I need them to be on December 31st. A very clear target.

The challenge is even if I hit my quota on November 30th, a month early, I just spent eleven months as a loser. Everyday that I don’t hit my goal, I lose.

Scott Adams (How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big) observes that with goals you are always in a perpetual state of losing, if you ever win at all. He points out that you can win every day if you follow your system to hit your goal.

Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.

His goal is not winning. It’s on the “process”. The system that has won his program a whole bucket full of National Titles.

We know that trial and error is part of the formula. Intellectually we accept trial, but not so much with error. Here’s where it gets personal (Ego) or professional (Craftsmanship):

Egoperspective–when we fail we let the shame of being a “loser” shape our identity. And our ego hates that. Failure becomes a “judgment” against you, one that reinforces your fear of not being “good enough.” You are an imposter that just got busted.

Craftsmanshipperspective–failure is a building block to success. Just another detour on the trip to success. Frustrating, yes, but expected and manageable.

Your perspective will decide which trajectory you experience. Not from a simplistic Positive Mental Attitude approach, but from a core and visceral level of drive and motivation.

People who are committed to the relentless journey of improvement see something different when they fail. Consider Peter Sims’ (Little Bets) capture of how one of the most successful animation studios in the world “un-sucks”:

When Ed Catmull (President, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios) sums up Pixar’s creative process, he describes it as going from ‘suck to unsuck.’ Pixar film ideas begin on rough storyboards that suck until they work through thousands of problems throughout the process in order to take films from suck to unsuck…

Of course, just failing is not the key; the key is to be systematically learning from failures. To be closely monitoring what’s working and making good use of that information.

Nick Saban is Head Coach of the University of Alabama’s football team and one of the most successful coaches in NCAA football history. His advice:

“Don’t waste failure.”

His encouragement is to get technical about what you need to do to improve to prevent another failure. Always in the context of what you did, not the other person. Because that’s the only thing you can improve. That’s how you win because of failure.

I’ve had my own brilliant disasters. And I have been deeply challenged in how I would interpret them.

My Junior year in college I lost the general election for Student Body President. It was such a fantastic failure, especially when it’s so painfully public. The day before the election I greeted everyone with a smarmy thumbs up, the day after I tried not to make eye contact.

I learned a lot about intestinal fortitude from that loss. Though not as consciously as I wish I could have. (It’s strange, years later I can remember the votes it would have taken to change the outcome.)

I adopted a new mantra gleaned from that experience: “NTC” (Nothing To Chance). I used that blistering experience to steel my resolve to get a post-college job on Wall Street (as an English Major, no mean feat) and into Business School for an MBA.

Failure can become fuel for growth, (however painful) or a damning judgment that stops us in our tracks. And how we view it matters.

Josh Waitkins, (The Art of Learning) calls this process of learning from failure as “investment in loss.” This requires a beginner’s mind and is the ultimate in humility. Easier to do when there are no expectations of you, harder when others expect performance and production.

I learned this lesson the hard way coming off a successful stint as General Manager in a publicly traded company. Having proven a Midas touch, I was ready to start my own company.

The fact that I had no entrepreneurial, industry, or venture capital experience didn’t slow me down a bit. I literally bet the farm (our entire life savings) on my success. After eleven months, we never got a product to market or secured the funding we needed. It was a complete crash and burn.

While very painful, the experience etched new lessons into my psyche. My new steppingstones (learned from failing) when starting a business would be:

Play to your strengths

Stack the deck with winnable games

Choose complimentary partners

Let quality drive quantity

Choosing to “invest in loss” changed how I approached my next entrepreneurial opportunity. While my first was a complete “break down,” my second startup was a “break even,” and my third was finally a “break out” success.

Mostly because I’m not sure if it’s even helpful. Clearly a list doesn’t mean anything by itself. It’s when a book is distilled into insights that drive better outcomes that any book (on any list) actually means something.

So, below is a list. If you have thoughts on ways to organize them in a more helpful way, I’d welcome your ideas.

I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of sales leaders and tens of thousands of their sales reps over the last seventeen years. Last year I started researching in earnest what sets elite performers apart from everyone else.

Why is it that a few excel, while most never come close to their potential? Why do most people hit a minimum level of performance, and then “hit cruise control” for the rest of their career?

What started as research became an obsession to answer these (and other) questions. I've tried to understand the science and simplicity that leads to craftsmanship. As a starting point, I offer this working definition:

“Craftsmanship” is the journey leading to mastery-- the calling and commitment to perpetual improvement. It encourages you to transform the capabilities that optimize potential, performance and contribution.

My learning has inspired me to personally apply these concepts. It’s easy to study in the abstract, harder to use yourself as the guinea pig. What is now clear to me is that mastery isn’t for the “gifted” few; it’s a discipline that can be replicated by anyone.

When looking for examples of craftsmanship, it’s easy to become enamored with celebrity talent, and observe the formidable gap between their performance and mine. Clearly, it’s unlikely that I could out-perform Steph Curry in the NBA or Thomas Edison in generating new patents. However, a closer look at craftsmanship reveals that there is much to be learned from their patterns of practice, focus and execution. As Dan Coyle observed, “Understanding how a few became great, anyone can become better.”

And I choose to become better.

Craftsmanship has improved my own habits and behaviors. It has enhanced what I see and expect in myself. Here are a few realizations:

I can improve. Not by a little, by game-changing magnitudes. It started with the humility to be open to guidance from others. Then proceeds to discipline. No matter how good I am (or think I am), I can be much better.

Let what “calls” you, guide you. A job was easy to get, harder to create a career, and invaluable to listen for my own calling to contribute in unique ways. I am learning to prioritize activities I am passionate about.

It’s a journey, not a destination. This process is ongoing. Transformation in talent builds over time and has no limit. Day after day. Years into careers.

The payoff of mastery is remarkable. The outcome is exponential success in your personal and professional life. You are more content and peaceful. More dedicated to serving those you love. Mastery is the gift that keeps giving.

Mastery is a living force innate to each of us, “craftsmanship” is the process of realizing it.

It has revealed an unexpected insight: I don’t work on craft, craft works on me. When you commit to craftsmanship, it begins to forge a new momentum and vision of what you can become.

Craftsmanship is a high octane journey with amazing vistas. Just ask Steph Curry. Who’s up for a road trip?

Call to Craftsmanship: Consider your desire to perform at elite levels. Is this a journey that interests you? If so, buckle up. Much more to come: “Road work ahead”